Buried Alive
by Shadowlite
Summary: The Nara children were always told stories of the ghost hiding in the compound's forest; how it would claim victims with its ghastly scythe. But what happens when Nara Fuuka detects the faintest chakra signature, hidden deep underground? No pairings. Rated T for a certain someone's dirty mouth.


The Nara children had been told the story since the time of the fifth Hokage. It was blatantly designed to instill fear and caution into the children, but they regarded it anyways. It was odd to the rest of the village, looking in. To see such an intelligent and cunning clan telling such superstitious stories to their young ones, instilling them with an illogical fear, was confusing to say the least. The story had been there so long that all of the parents themselves admitted to not knowing the purpose or origin of the story, only that their parents had told them to pass it on anyways. This only confused people further.

Most ignored it. A Nara never did anything without sound reason, and this must not have been any different. Besides, every legend had _some_ truth to it, right? So, long past the death of the sixth, the seventh, and all the way to the era of the eighth Hokage, the Nara told the story to their children.

Deep in the Nara's forest, there was a baneful ghost. An evil, vengeful spirit whose mortal body had been done in by a Nara himself. There was a part of the forest where none of the deer treaded on, for they would walk around it as if there was an invisible cylinder situated in the clearing.

Anyone foolish enough to search for the spirit would never be seen again, the last image seen by their doomed eyes would be of the blood-soaked scythe, and the spirit itself. Boney physique and eyes stained by the blood of its victim, some had even been so bold to describe its eyes as the blood of its victims. Blood red pools in empty sockets. It would yell insanely, scraping against the chilled forest air like nails on a chalkboard with a tortured voice.

It was how they kept the youth from wandering off into the expanse of the compound, most believed, and it worked. For the most part.

Nara Fuuka had been hearing the legend since she was young enough to understand language in the first place. Her father had been very detailed in describing the many ways the spirit would tear into curious children. All the things it could do with its ghastly scythe. Her mother had been the one to reassure her that the demon wouldn't find her if she didn't look for it.

Around the time her brother was born, she had started at the academy. She remembered vividly a day when all the academy-enrolled Nara had decided to investigate the ghost stories of their childhood, self assured that their E-rank substitutions could easily beat a ghost if it even did exist. Akie had suggested going at midnight since that was when spirits seemed to appear in all the legends. Genji, a "cowardly" boy, insisted on starting the search at high noon, so the shadows would be long after a few hours of looking. That way, their parents and the older students could stop the ghost easier and save them.

In the end, they had created two groups, one to search during the day, and another at night. Fuuka had been put on night search, and met up with her group in the woods when the day group came back empty-handed.

Their plan had been to search for a clearing where the deer refused to go. They split up into groups of three and tested each clearing systematically. To their absolute amazement, they found one. Akie had tried leading deer upon deer into the clearing, but they refused every time, growing alert and tense. It was as if they had spotted a tiger. The deer would simply... freeze. If they made a move to bring it further in, it would turn tail and leap away at top speed, disappearing into the shadows. They searched and searched through the night, but never found their ghost. No one died, everyone seemed reasonably calm, even. Their childhood terror was a lie, so they forgot about it.

That was when she felt it.

Fuuka never cared when the teachers would ramble on about nin-types in class, she never listened. Genjutsu-type, ninjutsu-type, who cares? It seemed she was a sensor type. Because she felt it, weak and distant, but there nonetheless.

It was deep, deep underground, and she _felt_ it. A strange presence, like the ones that everyone else gave off. A humming, warm, throbbing feeling. But she was only seven. She ignored it. And so they returned the next morning, search fruitless; leaving them with "troublesome" parents to deal with, having noticed their children missing in the night.

She'd return there nearly every day after that. She would sit there and do homework, she would practice her jutsus. The grass grew a slightly more yellow colour there, she had noted. And the deer never went near.

Every day she would check for the feeling, only to find that it was ever-present. She graduated from the academy; still there. She joined a genin team; still there. She learned that the feeling was a chakra signature; still there. Her brother joined the academy; still there. She made chunnin; still there. It never moved, it never left, it _never_ faded. There, there, _there_.

She trained there, she'd slept there, she cried there, once she even took her date there. And still it remained, the omnipresent part of her life. By the time her brother had graduated, she'd arranged a little garden and sitting area there, careful to never step directly above the signature, or place anything over it, no matter how far down it was.

It was her little obsession, her little secret, her little mystery.

At times it was frustrating, maddening even. It never moved, or changed, it was so sure. When her father died, it was her security, it would never leave her, it would always stay there, deep, deep under the earth. She'd cried into the soil above the presence, cried and cried. Sometimes she thought she was going crazy. She'd thought once or twice to tell someone about it, but then it might change, they might dig it up, it might run away, they might take it from her.

She made jounin at seventeen, and ANBU at nineteen. Her mask was a generic bird, a robin, which Fuuka thought suited her just fine. She'd become a master tracker, able to sense even civilian chakra from tens of kilometers away, able to give the type, skill level, gender, and elemental affinity of any enemy in a heartbeat. Her own charka control was impeccable, and her shadow techniques were nothing to scoff at.

While in training, she'd used the signature underground for practice. She'd run through the feeling of its chakra and compare it to family members, team members. _Male; Ninjutsu-type; Weakest in genjutsu; Wind-affinity; S-rank_. The last part always astonished her. To think that something of _S-ranked_ strength was (hiding? Trapped?) in her backyard was odd enough, but for it to not have moved in_ eleven years_? And it was _still alive_?

She was ANBU, she knew this was something to report. But she never did, she didn't want it to be taken away, killed, tortured. Whatever it was, it had watched her grow, in a strange way. She just couldn't do it.

Then, one day, she decided to dig it up.


End file.
